Thursday, May 23, 2013

Can We Borrow Your Kids?

So...we've devised a plan to help us get ready to be foster parents and it involves borrowing our friends' kids. We promise we'll give them back.

We are soon going to have various sets of children of various ages plopped into our home at a few hours' notice and we're going to have to jump right in as best we can. No context or history of what that child likes to eat, wear, talk about, sleep with, play with, nothing. That's a little daunting. So we decided it might be a good idea to get a little practice.

Here is where your kids come in. Can we borrow them? In actual conversation, this will be masked as a civil offer to babysit your children free of charge and give you a night off or out. And that is truly a goal and side effect of this, one that I'm sure won't be argued with. But in reality, we need some experience taking care of kiddos of various ages with whom we have very little history, if any.

It was a sweet cutie patootie little girl that brought on this idea.

An offer to babysit little Elizabeth and give her parents a night out made me realize...I didn't really know what is ok for a 1.5 year old to eat...or what they like to play with...or what time they typically go to bed...or what items in our house are within the reach of little hands that shouldn't have them...

We had a very fun and nonstop evening with Elizabeth but it got me to thinking about all this. I know there is a whole lot we are just going to have to take in stride and figure out as we go when we begin to take care of kids in our home as foster parents. A whole lot. But in the meantime, I figure it wouldn't hurt to gain a little bit of experience.